Tag Archives: past

Canadian artist Tonya Corkey creates portraits made out of lint on canvas. Through her choice of material and subject, the artist looks to investigate an unavoidable aspect of human nature- precisely, the the need to collect memories and reconstruct the past. The series, “See You In the Future,” looks to further analyze this desire to recollect objects and moments of the past through a medium that encompasses the essence of loss and decay over time.

My work hybridizes the discarded material of lint with the second hand image – the iconic school photograph – to conceptualize my interests. Materiality conceptually layers the work. As a byproduct of society, lint consists of fibers, hair, dead skin and other debris, and thus directly referencing people and their daily activity. Lint and cast off photographs are both discarded materials – materials that reflect the idea of a decaying memory. Our desire for memory in absence is triggered by sensations of smell and touch, a trait of my work.